Page 61 of Feral

“Okay, Agent. Let me take your statement and then you can go ahead. We’ll stay here to protect the crime scene.”

Thank God for small town sheriffs.

I looked over at Rob and gave him a weak smile.

Everything had changed. My whole life had turned upside down, and the one thing I knew that mattered—the only thing—was him.

29

WILLOW

“And now,my little ginger she-wolf, it’s time for your punishment.” Rob backed me up against the bed, tugging my clothes off as he went.

We were at his pack’s mountain lodge in the private bedroom in the back. Rob brought me up so I could practice shifting, but first… he had something else in mind.

I’d spent the past day bogged down in procedures. The sheriff and paramedics with Markle’s body had left by dawn, but the DEA had remained all day, searching the property, making an inventory of the drugs and working with Canadian customs to watch for other shipments. Markle’s drug channel was shut down.

My body had mostly healed. I still had a mark and felt twinges where the bullet hit me, but that was it. My shifter genes had saved my life.

Everything in my life suddenly made sense. What I’d told Rob when I’d first shifted back: my sensitive nose, my heightened instincts, my love of running. And what I hadn’t told him. Why I’d never felt like I belonged in society. Until I’d come to Cooper Valley and found Rob. I knew from my paperwork my birth mother, who had been just a teenager, had been admitted as a Jane Doe to a hospital in Billings. She’d had me and disappeared from her hospital bed, abandoning me. Whether she was the shifter or my dad was, I couldn’t be sure, but for some reason, it changed the story for me.

I’d felt abandoned before. Unwanted.

Now I felt special. My parents—or one of them—had given me a gift. I was half-shifter. Able to turn into a beautiful ginger wolf, according to Rob. And I had a mate. I’d known it since the first second he’d barged into my room and caught me with my dildo.

We still had to discuss our future.

I had to decide if being his mate was what I wanted, although there wasn’t all that much of a decision.

“Why punishment? I haven’t been bad,” I replied, allowing him to slip my panties off, so I stood naked before him.

He arched a brow. “You went to Markle’s, a known drug dealer, not once, not twice but multiple times without someone with you. I told you I wanted you to stay away from him. That’s being a bad girl.”

A shiver of excitement ran through me at the same time as remorse. I’d been doing my job, and he’d just been trying to protect me. I could see how he’d have been afraid. God, if I’d seen someone hold a gun to his head… then shoot him. I wanted to throw up. I so deserved to be spanked or whatever he wanted to make amends. To make him feel better, to know I was safe and whole and under his control.

It was over though, and he needed to get past it as much as me. I’d let him do whatever he needed to feel better because it would heal me, too, and not the gunshot wound.

I wouldn’t let him sink into the what if’s though. “You’ll have to catch me, first,” I called out, turning and dashing through the lodge.

He stayed a breath behind me but let me get all the way in before he caught me up around the waist and swung me into the air. He tossed and flipped me, so I landed over his shoulder, then carried me back dropped me onto the large bed.

“On your belly, legs spread.” His voice was thick and gravelly with desire.

I grinned up at him. “Make me,” I taunted because I loved it when he showed me his strength. I loved that he could overpower me. That his commands made my body instantly respond.

What could be sexier?

He laughed and climbed over me, snatching up my wrists. In a flash, he had me on my belly, my wrists pinned behind my back in one of his large hands. With the other, he smacked my ass.

I shrieked and wriggled although pain had changed for me now that I’d found my inner wolf. I registered the sensation, but it was not nearly so uncomfortable. In fact, I rather welcomed it. I shoved my ass up for more.

He spanked harder, alternating slapping one cheek then the other until my whole ass was warm and tingly. “Never put yourself in a situation like that again. No guns. No bad guys. In fact, no other men at all.”

Each thing he said was accompanied by a solid spank until I was sure my butt was a fiery shade of red.

“No guns. No men. Only you,” I cried out.

He kept going until he felt reassured of my words or that my ass had been spanked enough that I’d learned my lesson.